


Neck Decorated By Devil

by FallenGracex



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abandonment, Daddy Kink, Dark Character, Dark Petyr, Dark Sansa, Europe, F/M, Family Member Death, Greek Mythology - Freeform, I've always wanted to read something like this but I never found it so I decided to write it myself, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Ireland, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Older Man/Younger Woman, Underworld, bow down to me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-04-08 00:18:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14092866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallenGracex/pseuds/FallenGracex
Summary: As a daughter of very influential parents, Sansa Stark always had to be all obedient and honorable. Tied up by rules her entire life, suffering under mocking of her siblings, under her own fate. However, only until she finds an unforeseen desire for sin and unknowingly comes in sight of a man, who's been forgotten by ordinary mortals for ages.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Very well, I'm far from being a native English speaker, so there may be some damn mistakes (even though I tried to eliminate as much as possible), so if there's anyone willing to become my very own beta and take a look at my not-as-neat-as-I-want-it-to-be grammar, I'd be very pleased.
> 
> Also, this story is clearly inspired by the myth of Hades and Persephone. I'm just obsessed with this AU, so... yeah.
> 
> Enjoy!

_Blood longingly flickers in veins,_  
_as well as a human mind silently flows._  
_Yet when usurper swallows it,_  
_it's beauty dies._

***

"Sansa, start reading on the page 28, please."

The girl flipped her book so the jacket faced the ceiling.  _Old Greek Myths and Legends._ When she opened it, she felt like she came back in time. Musty scent of old pages gradually filled the air. She crouched her nose and started to turn the pages. Paper almost tend to fall apart upon her fingertips, left microscopic silt of dirt on them, dirt that lied on it for decades. _The Kingdom of gloomy Hades_ , screamed title of the chapter. Hades wasn't the only gloomy creature in the world, according to other student's faces.

"Deep down under the ground, the merciless and gloomy brother of Zeus reigns. His kingdom is full of low spirits and dread. Joyful beams of sunlight never reach there. Bottomless gulfs lead into the sad kingdom of Hades. Dark rivers stream there. Even the holy river Styx which freezes everything. By her water the gods implore." Her high-pitched sweet voice was in sharp contrast with content of the paragraph, which flew between her lips like a strand of muddy water. Words tend to get stuck on her tongue, clung to it as hard as lead, cracked between her teeth like a river sand. She didn't dare to guess how it must have been down there, in the underworld, if even just an old book had such effect. Even though her mind was almost always strictly rational, she slipped to her weird imagines of mythical creatures from time to time. Her peers never seemed to understand that, nor they believed in them.

"What do you think about this passage, Sansa?" Literature professor's voice yanked her out of her thoughts. Hypnos' soporific potion stopped to work in an instant and Sansa woke up in ruthless armful of reality. She shrugged and positioned herself on her chair a bit forward. Her eyes fixed to the back of the student who sat right in front of her, just to make sure she wouldn't have to look the professor in the eye.

"I don't know." Later that day, she was supposed to go on a date with Joffrey. Every now and then she glanced to the clock right above blackboard, hoping for it's tiny hand to never reach number nine. Joffrey was her childhood crush. They got acquainted somewhere at the age of eleven, because their fathers were good friends. It was nearly a rule - children of two friends always had to become friends as well. The fact that one of them was a monster and the other was his victim was in no one's concern.

The bell finally rang. That sound cut through her like a blade of a knife. Her failed attempt of analysis left the professor almost in tears. He just disgustedly waved with his hand, took a huge pile of books from his table and silently, like a shadow, left the classroom. Sansa watched him for a little while. That man always seemed very unhappy and cheerless to her. Those two words made her shiver from head to toes. From the roots of her hair to the tips of her fingernails. Joffrey has waited for her outside the school and it was well-known that he hated waiting. Sansa had exactly ten minutes to escape the labyrinth of school corridors and jump right into the throat of hell. Every time Joffrey showed up somewhere, the world seemed to darken. Clouds turned to black, gathered to create an impassable wall and never let a single chaste kiss of sunlight to caress Sansa's fearful mind.

Sansa opened the main door precisely at two o'clock. Joffrey stood at the road, cold as always. He was so pale that it seemed like blood was completely sucked out of his veins. No heartbeat. No empathy. No more sweet feelings. Golden hair with a slight white tinge bristled in every possible and impossible direction and his faint watery blue eyes pierced her like pins. Instead of a warm hug as a welcome, he only patted the expensive shining watch on his wrist with a long, slender index finger.

"You were _almost_ late, Sansa." The girl instinctively ducked before the threat of whirlwind of anger and insults. Even though nothing came to _punish_ her, she didn't feel calm. Suffocating uncertainty crept up her body, sank into her bones and like ink soaked into her skin. She didn't understand what charmed her about him back then. He was beautiful, gorgeous, but his beauty resembled a magic of icy wasteland more than warm oasis of peace and love. But she used to not see him like this. He used to be so chivalrous, so polite, so... _perfect_. However, at the moment they stood alone, prince-Charming-to-be Joffrey turned to a bloodthirsty monster. Everybody ignored bruises that covered her body. Nobody believed that Joffrey could be their cause.

"Professor lingered me," she lied and glanced to a black car which stopped just few meters far from them and purred it's luscious melody of safety. Sansa imagined herself stuck in heavenly soft seats, surrounded by the army of metal and glass in all four winds, hidden before world, before Joffrey. If she only could, if it could work out... she wouldn't hesitate even for a second and jump inside immediately. She'd place her hands on a steering wheel, tame horses who whined under the bonnet, press accelerator to the ground and like a thunderbolt go off to the unknown.

"We're going to see a movie tomorrow night. Dad's gonna borrow me his BMW, so I'm taking you there." He never gave her an option to choose. He simply set up where their footsteps will lead. If she'd let him, he would determine her entire life. That thought scared her to the core. The idea of two of them, not spending just few hours a week, but a lifetime, was horrifying. She didn't say a word that would reflect a sign of protest. She knew that if she did something like that, her face would win it. She remembered the day he slapped her for the first time. It surprised her - actually not the physical pain, but the psychical was what scared her off. She'd never think that he'd be capable of something so horrible. That day, she immediately run to her mother who told her it was normal. Even back then Sansa suspected it was hardly _normal,_ but mother's soothing arms weighed up all her words and silenced every doubt. Catelyn Stark promoted weird kind of raising her children - she barely did. Nanny was always in the house and when Sansa addressed to her as a mother once, she got enormously scolded. There was a deep incomprehension in her blue eyes. She cared for her twenty-four hours a day, prepared her lunch, helped her with the tasks - why could she not reach her with the title that belonged to her? But the older Sansa was, the relationship with her mother improved. She was now on the threshold of maturity, and Mrs. Stark felt that it would not take long, and the eldest daughter would also fly out of the nest.

Sansa's parents worked in the ministry and therefore didn't have much time for their children. Sansa differed diametrically from her siblings. While her younger sister, Arya, was like a wild animal, constantly drowned in trouble and joyfully engaged in her brother's typical guy activities, Sansa read, led herself wander on the wings of the mythical heroes, envious of their happy lives in the fictional worlds where was no Joffrey to torment her. Every evil judge she had met in one of her stories, she asked if it was all her work. Nevertheless, there were no answers. No dark fairy wanted to take accountability of the unfair circumstances in which Sansa was born. She had everything but nothing. Everyone could be envious of her allowance, but individual coins were poisoned with streams of tears.

There was a creak of tire against asphalt. The black car pulled away slowly, and in a moment it was already driving down the street. Sansa knew she was trapped. Joffrey seemed to read her thoughts, because his mouth with thin, glossy, worm-like lips, was stretched in a cruel smile. Her guts twisted in a tangle of fear. He grasped Sansa's face in cold hands and hungrily leaned to her lips. Sansa stood there like she was scalded. Joffrey's cold nature froze her, chained her, and didn't allow any move that meant deliverance. She felt his tongue break into her mouth and she tried to not throw up from disgust. Suddenly, a suicidal thought came to her mind.

Surprisingly, she opened her mouth to greet the slimy, warm touch of his tongue, as a lecherous palm crawled over the inside of her thigh. She let him get drunk with victory and domination. At that moment, her trap was slammed down, and Joffrey broke from her lips with a choked cry, with red liquid dripping from his sleazy tongue. Sansa leaned forward and began to spit his blood in the grass as Joffrey crept down on the ground and sobbed, half pain, half rage. The taste of the iron was tingling on her tongue, squeezing into her flesh, _firing the number one_. Sansa wondered if she should call for help, because with every passing second, his lamentation was less audible, but a voice that had been hidden deep in the darkest shifts of her brain, whispered clear and burning no. It sounded like a viper's sigh, seductive and charming. She had never fulfilled the command with such joy as she did now. She glanced at Joffrey for the last time and ran in the same direction that the black car had left a few minutes before. The viper crawled behind her, grinning with satisfaction.

Somewhere on the other side of the familiar world, at the very edge of the universe, at the turn of the millennium, and at the very beginning of the ages and their end, the mysterious entity shivered with happiness.

  
_First sin._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I usually don't leave many notes unless I have something to say. Anyways, our beloved sweet Sans finally meets darkness itself.

The pavement turned into a turbulent sea. Her feet slid over the asphalt waves, immersed into fine foam of autumn leaves, and a heavy inexorable palm of coldness choked her. Joffrey's anger crawled like a shadow behind her, bursting through the grey behind her back like a shark's fin and licked her heels. As soon as Sansa caught her breath and she thought she would lose consciousness at any moment, that was when she found a door in front of her, like the comforting armful of a guardian angel. She paused for a moment, shot her eyes up and saw a swinging sign. With one hand, she pulled a heavy oak plate and waved the other in front of her as she burst into the room. The muted yellow light flooded the interior inlaid with wood, reflected from the walls, created peculiar shapes from which Sansa's head started to spin. There was a bubbling laughter, muffled screams, occasional squeak of chairs or a clink of pints. She squinted across the bar, where a shabby innkeeper scratched the inside of his ear and a dozen of bottles gleamed. 

She reeled to the nearest bar stool and took a few deep breaths with her face buried in her hands. _Joffrey will never find me here_ , she thought with relief, even though her heart was frantically bumping into her ribs as a pneumatic hammer, and the blood throbbed in her ears. Joff had never taken her out. His opinion was that any other boy's stare must not lay upon his girlfriend when he was in charge, and therefore he took her only to his father's private space where it was only two of them. Joffrey liked that. Sansa couldn't resist and fight back, if she wanted. But at that time, she was still charmed by him, naive as a lamb dazed by soft fresh spring grass. Naively, she thought that Joffrey would be the one to kiss her in front of the altar and put a golden ring with diamonds on her finger.

"You over eighteen, girl?" Sansa looked up sharply, and her gentle, sky-blue look clashed with the landlord, staring at her with his bitter, blood-spattered eyes, and she barely resisted the urge to shake.

"No," she whispered, getting ready to get off the chair when a shadow appeared over her.

"I'll take care of her." The velvet baritone forced her to turn her head backwards. Man in a precious dark suit stood only a short distance away. She stood up, her feet trembling, and leaned against the bar counter with the tips of her fingers. He was shorter than she expected. He could have been about as tall as she was, but the strange aura that had illuminated from his body, seemed to exceed her. His hair was perfectly trimmed, carefully combed on the sides, with the silver threads on his temples, but otherwise jet black. Overhead, slightly sloppy, but it was also a very refined impression.

Though he didn't say one more word, Sansa followed him blindly to the table where he sat. She had seen him for the first time in her life, and she knew nothing about him, but she felt safer in his presence than she did while she sat at the bar, exposed to the mercy of the innkeeper, who could kick her to the street at any time. She focused on her mysterious savior. He wasn't staggeringly muscular, but the energy of power of experience radiated from his body so confidently that she didn't even dream of fear. _He won't hurt me_ , she thought. The light softly kissed his face, and Sansa saw the features of his face. High cheekbones, a straight nose, a sharply cut jaw covered with a short black stubble with a slight glow of white bits. He clearly wasn't the blond prince on the white horse, but Sansa had long understood that even the most beautiful aristocrat could ever be a barbarian. She would have done better if she surrendered to the devil - nothing could surprise her.

"Sit down," he said, waiting for her body to meet the soft padding of the seat, then sat in front her her. Sansa glanced around the small box that adjoined several others. Taproom and benches on which regulars sat were far from them, and Sansa had the feeling that she had moved with that mysterious man into another dimension. Surrounding world seemed to be so distant, trapped in captivity, but without the possibility of influencing the presence and with fear of the future emancipated from reality. _This_ was her reality now. She felt his eyes sank into hers. Sansa's stare timidly flickered over his face. Her breath was now stuck in her throat. She knew that she wouldn't be able to escape if she stared into those dark pools for too long. She didn't want to trust the color of the night sky mixed with silver, that shuffled from side to side and shining in dim light. Sansa wondered how it would look like transformed into a ring. How would it sting and feel cold against her delicate skin if she'd put it on her finger.

"What's your name?"

"Drink." At the whisper of sound, as the glass rubbed against wood, he brought her a glass of Guinness standing untouched on the table in front of him. Sansa looked at him in disbelief. _As if he knew I was coming_ , she thought when she touched a drop that ran down the outside of the glass with her forefinger. _Who the hell are you?_ She looked him boldly in the eye and her fingers wrapped around the cold glass, and when she began to drink, the corners of his mouth rose in a warm smile, but his eyes remained cold and still. Silver in them didn't turn to gold that would heat his gaze up. Yet Sansa knew she wouldn't be able to leave, not before he'd reveal his identity.

"Acheron."

Sansa coughed. She quickly placed the glass on the table, so fast that the beer gushed, her t-shirt slightly wet, and percolated into the gaping groove in a hand-carved table. She had never concealed the delight in Greek mythology, and so she knew very well where the name came from. Acheron was the name of the river that flowed through the Underworld, the dark and desolate realm of Hades. _This can't be his real name. He's clearly fucking me around._ However, she asked him no additional questions.

"What brought such a sweet young girl like you in such a dirty hole?" He said with a stoic calm. Sansa nervously tucked her flaming red hair behind her ear.

"That's none of your business," she said, silently. "I ran away from my ... ex-boyfriend. I bite his tongue when he tried to kiss me," she added.  Although her insight was alarming, her brain seemed to go into the sleep mode, and it was completely replaced by her heart which suggested to reveal her secrets to Acheron. He was the perfect incarnation of darkness, but maybe it was what attracted her to him almost magnetically.

"That's nothing that a good girl would entrust to the reclusive wolf she had just met in a pub where she shouldn't be at all," he raised his eyebrows, leaned across the table as his elbows rested against it's plate. "And?"

Sansa frowned. She was no good girl. Good girls don't bite their counterparts and don't let them bleed in the grass in front of the school.

"We had met when I was eleven. Our fathers are friends, so there was nothing left for us than to start friendship too. I was really silly and naive little cow back then because I fell in love with him and I'd be able to do anything for him. That bastard soon began to take advantage of it. When we really started dating, I was fourteen. The very beginning was quite beautiful, but then her started to beat me. Joffrey has always seemed to be the most lovable and the best boy. And I let him deceive me because he is just a _fucking_ monster." At first, her voice was overflowing with rage, but as she approached the end of her narrative, it became more and more fragile until it eventually broke completely and no sights of hatred remained. Her tears filled her eyes, and the skin on her face was burning in the memory of Joffrey.

"Nice story."

"What?"

"A very, very nice story," he repeated, holding out his hand to wipe tears from her face, which rolled down from beneath her long lashes. Sansa unwittingly pressed her face closer to his palm, as a steel fist of fear captured her heart and it flickered like a little bird in it's grip, but her actions testified to the contrary. Her fingers touched the back of his palm and Sansa slowly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, his palm disappeared just as he did himself. _It was all just a dream,_ she thought angrily as she focused on the darkness in front of her for a moment, trying to find his silhouette again. She felt completely naked, vulnerable as a fawn that his mother had left.

Her thigh felt cold. She lowered her head and immediately returned it back to it's original position. Her heart raged wildly. A glass of beer, in which she had plunged her lips a few minutes ago, still stood there.


	3. Chapter 3

With his own ease, he walked through the wall of human bodies. Every time he saw some of their passion-colored eyes, the sparks in them seemed to fade and pupils puckered back to the standard size. The complex of rooms shaded by thick red curtains, which had the task of inducing a false sense of privacy, didn't wake any emotion inside him. He didn't feel frightened when the hands of lame men and scarcely worn-out women ran out to reach him, striding from everywhere like hot, skin and flesh covered branches of ominous trees. He didn't feel any scorn when he smelled the pungent aroma of sweat in his nose, mixed with the heavy smell of hundreds scented sticks that burned in the whole establishment. With their dense choking smoke, they filled every corner and veiled otherwise completely naked and shiny bodies in a strange gray robe. All of his clients and employees acted like a rabble of demons, hell-envoys, fallen angels who had come to the world of mortals just to commit sins and to bring gentle girls out of misery. They, as innocent as the spring blossom, curiously pushing their shoots out of the frozen fragile soil, were in the greatest danger in places like this. 

"Hey, handsome," a woman said, leaning out of the door. Her breath soaked with wine tingled his neck, and sent a freezing gust down his spine that had disappeared beneath his legs and had no chance of getting lost in the desired places.

"I'm your boss, stupid," he growled, and with a sense of satisfaction watched as she stretched her face in disappointment, and with a disgusting snort spat again in the sea of damned souls. In the brother, he always felt like in the underworld. Pervasive moaning and shallow gasping full of pretended pleasure reminded him of wailing of the souls trapped far beyond the Styx River. Slapping of skin sounded like a remark of the monster ferryboat of Charon and his rudder, whose paddle struck black water with the same burning regularity and rigidity.

When he finally stood on the stairs leading to his office, he felt like the ruler he was again. He stood on top of this constantly intertwining cluster of vices in his not too dizzy size, his dark gaze sweeping over the crowns of the heads rising in various rhythms and watched their faces curving in sweet agony. A happy smile danced on his lips. When he had to leave his kingdom, he was glad that he had managed to unleash the chaos both there and in the world of men. _You're so feeble_ , he thought amusedly as he saw the desperate act of one of the newcomers in the corner of his eye. He gave himself to the first woman on whom his eyes had fallen, though in the depths of the small underworld on the surface of the Earth a much juicy fruit was waiting.

He turned on his heel, and without looking back, he squeezed the polished handle on the black door and disappeared in his office softly like a shadow.

***

There was no dream that fateful night. Sansa supposed it would be full of nightmares, that she would wake up covered in sweat, heavy breathing, but her sleep was terribly calm. It was as if the meeting had eaten all of the energy she had, both positive and negative. She felt a light touch on her shoulder. For a moment, her intestines withdrew and her stomach twisted into an unnatural knot. She opened her eyes and saw a ruffled mop of hair interlaced with silver threads. But when she raised her hand and her fingers rubbed her eyes, the image created by her subconscious disappeared. It was replaced with the tender, wrinkles-sprinkled face of her mother, lined by a flood of equally dense red hair like Sansa's.

"Good morning, sweetheart," she whispered, running her palm over Sansa's forehead. She recalled her childhood, a term ablaze in sunshine, tasting like lollipops, perfectly carefree and innocent period, a time when she didn't understand anything that troubled her now. At that time it all seemed normal.

"You murmured some name at night. I thought you were calling me, so I came to see you," Mrs. Stark said, her brows furrowed, examining her daughter with her eyes. Sansa felt a sharp prick in her stomach.

"That..." she squeezed out of herself, but before she could finish the sentence, the older woman interrupted her.

"Do you have a boyfriend, darling?"

Sansa quickly shook her head.

"No! I'm gonna write a literature exam tomorrow, and I couldn't remember the name, so I taught it so long that I might even say it in my sleep," she laughed nervously and pulled the duvet closer to her chin, as her entrails turned into a nest full of snakes. Catelyn smiled and stroked her hair.

"Fine, just remain a good student. And get up or you'll be late to school. You wouldn't write this exam at all, and some Acheron would be useless for you," she said with a roguish tone in her voice. Sansa returned her smile, but she was almost about to faint.

_Acheron._

A thin cluster of fear mingled with excitement had crept over her spine.

***

The fact that Mrs. Stark invited her evening guests was nothing special. She loved company, and nothing could make her heart swoon more than a glass of wine with her friends. As a high-ranking employee of the Ministry, she had more of a party than usual, so her children had to get used to it. The eldest sons, who were fit to manage their own lives, were always quick to run into the depths of the night. Younger daughters, tied to their places with the curse of childhood, couldn't avoid their mother's whims, and therefore had to become part of them. While in Arya's case, Mrs. Stark met with deep contempt, the older Sansa was her opposite. She loved the whole process of preparation, she brushed her hair for so long until it shined like a liquid copper and she would choose her clothes indefinitely.

When there was a soft knock on the door, Sansa was sitting at her Victorian-style dressing table, whose ancient vision was disturbed only by the flood of white Christmas lights, hanging around the mirror. She stared at her reflection, searching for imperfections that didn't exist. Her alabaster skin glowed in the dark, just like the two pale blue gems of her eyes, pupils circled by a black trim. She clutched the brush in her left hand, and the ocean of red hair poured from side to side.

"Come in!" she called half-strangled, then cleared her throat.

Her mother slipped silently inside and closed the door quietly behind her. Sansa heard the lock click. Mrs. Stark took a brush without a word, folded her hair on her back and took over her job. Sansa reached for the cosmetic bag and pulled the pencil out of her. She twisted it in her fingers for a moment, then shoved it back. She brushed her eyelashes lightly with a mascara and applied a colorless gloss to her lips.

"You don't have to wear make-up to be beautiful," praised her the older woman. Sansa smiled.

"Who's coming tonight?"

"Petyr. He's my childhood friend. We haven't seen each other for a long time, because we had a... some disagreement between us. As a teenager, he was in love with me and he got involved in something unpleasant. He wears scars on both his body and his soul." Sansa shuddered. _What could be so terrible that the pain didn't go away even after so many years?_   Sansa watched her mother as she created a complex hairstyle on her head. She loosened it a little bit, leaving two soft strands of hair to run down Sansa's cheeks and hang around them like two copper sprigs.

"Thanks," she whispered, without looking away from the mirror, whose glossy smooth surface constantly persuaded her that she was beautiful. She stood up and walked carefully out of the door behind her mother, who was burning with impatience. _Or was it fear?_ She shuddered, but there was a smile upon her lips. Sansa, with a questioning look, stood next to her, Mrs. Stark looking up at the clock, and a second afterwards the bell rang out, Catelyn quickly ran towards the entrance. The glass of the door in the hall blurred Sansa's gaze but the girl didn't take a single step in it's direction. The moment Catelyn opened the door with a squeak, coolness and tension began to flow into the house, the fluorescent lights dimming, the sticky black mist wrapping around Sansa's ankles and pulling her to the ground. Sansa was hypnotized by a dark male silhouette, flashing like a shadow in front of her eyes squeezed her mother's tiny body in a hugging embrace. Catelyn smiled at her as she came forward and gestured to her to make herself look nice and welcoming to the newcomer, but Sansa's blood stiffened blood in her veins and, at the same time, enlivened at a mad pace.

Precisely cut black hair, temples kissed with silver.

Sansa's heart skipped two beats and stopped.

As soon as he lifted a corner of his mouth in the knowing grin that belonged only to her, it exploded, and it's remnants descended in Acheron's wide open palms.


	4. Chapter 4

Catelyn Stark was nervously smiling at the man who was brazenly sitting at her dining table, to which the broad family normally sat, and pulled the threads like a puppeteer. A perverse, bewitching puppeteer who cut into human emotions like it was a soft sandalwood and sliced the pieces he needed. Larger, smaller, fine, coarse. With his material, he was able to work almost perfectly. He didn't have the problem of modeling the human mind towards his image. He kneaded it with his palms, smoothed imperfections, and replaced it with his own precision. It was said he was a genius. The rumors have never been as close to the truth as they were now.

She played with a spoon spattered with coffee, clinking on the porcelain wall of the mug standing on the table in front of her, and the lingering steam was hiding her judgment into the treacherous attire of ignorance. She ignored the influence Petyr had on Sansa, ignored him, didn't see him. He also seemed charming to her. The way he described absolutely ordinary things and made the impression of a man who can make anything fascinating and worthy attention fascinated her. So it wasn't surprising that Sansa stared at his lips and devoured every word that left them. She felt like he tied her to himself more and more with each second. The girl suddenly ceased to be her daughter, and she became Petyr's toy, perfectly bewitched by the silver stare of her old friend. She moved the spoon, leaving a sharp sound that broke into the dense air in the room like the edge of the knife. Catelyn didn't love him, she didn't even care for him, but she just couldn't tell him no. She wanted to protect her daughter from him, but she didn't have the strength. She wanted to be immune to his influences, but it was just his snake nature that brought her to bad ways. Like poison blunting the human nervous system, Petyr paralyzed her clear mind.

"Petyr, I don't want to interrupt you, but it's really too late. Sansa goes to school early in the morning, and I also have a lot of duties to fulfil," she told him politely to stop trying to get his clutches into the redhead girl. Unlike her daughter, she knew what was the source of his considerable wealth. The roof flat in Dublin was just overwhelmed by the most disgusting things Catelyn had ever seen, perhaps that was one of the many reasons why she had turned away from him years ago. Petyr reached far. Far beyond he should had. She tried to fight him, but also knew that her poor defiance will have little effect.

Sansa yanked irritably, then gave her mother an accusing look. Mrs. Stark frowned. _She must even be in love with him_ , flew through her head as she saw a well-known expression of a lovesick puppy on her daughter's face for a moment. It gleamed from her eyes even when she was in love with Joffrey. Catelyn had already suspected that the boy wasn't alright, but in spite of keeping good friendship and business relations with his family, she kept silent. When he hit Sansa for the first time, she wanted to get into his family's mansion and ruin him. She still regretted that she favored the well-being of people she didn't care about instead of her eldest daughter's happiness. _She's seventeen. She is old enough to know what is right and what isn't._ She tried to apologize for the deeds she had hurt her daughter with, but none of the excuses appeared to be satisfactory enough to forget the time when she failed as a mother.

"Good. I was on my way off, anyway," Petyr said promptly, but he didn't move a single muscle to suggest that he was serious about his words, and Sansa furiously flashed her gaze between Petyr and her mother. They looked like as if they took an eternal struggle. A conflict as old as humanity itself - the conflict between lust and reason, between love and duty. Sansa realized that she had never asked for the story, and she promised that as soon as the right moment came, she would correct it.

Catelyn Stark was getting up from the table to escort her guest, but Sansa was quicker. She leaped to her feet, tucked a loose strand of red hair behind her ear and smiled sweetly. _I am the minister's obedient daughter, but only for as long as my mother sees me._

"I'll do it."

Before Mrs. Stark could recover, Sansa and Petyr were leaving the living room and fled in front of her. Petyr lifted his right hand and waved with the tips of his fingers at Catelyn, and the woman nervously returned his gesture. She watched how he wriggled in his expensive leather boots, how his fingers played with the laces, and wondered what would happen if he started to play with her daughter's mind like this too, but Sansa didn't look frightened at all. On the contrary, she probably felt good in his presence. Petyr had a strange spell of personality that made the people around him feel that they were really useful and unique, and she never knew where that ability came from. Catelyn only knew it was very dangerous.

"Take care, Petyr."

"You too, Catelyn."

***

The cold snapped into her like sharp fangs of the wolves that wandered through the surrounding forests. She stood with him in front of the gate and watched him walk around his car with elegant steps. The lights blinked, and the remote control of the lock made the characteristic toot sound. Sansa's eyes slowly adjusted to the ubiquitous darkness. She saw the silver wings, stretching out on the front hood, crowned with a black label with Aston Martin inscription. Sansa shuddered, but not with cold.

"Was that you?" she blinked in surprise and folded her arms on her chest.

"Yes," he replied simply, opening the door on the driver's side. The light inside the car switched on and lit up his face like a bluish god-like aura. A sudden awareness hit her like a blow to her stomach. "I know you since you came to this world. You were so tiny, so magical. Daddy's little girl, mummy's sweetest joy. Your family loves you, Sansa, but they can't protect you from the outside world that is much more bloodthirsty and furious than you think." Like a shadow, he appeared in front of her. The cold palm fell on her face again, his fingers sticking to the soft skin that glowed gently in the pale moonlight. In the next moment, in the middle of her forehead, she felt the touch of his lips. The grayish stubble scratched her sharply, but she didn't even make a sound.

"I want more."

"What exactly should it be?" he whispered, his lips stopping right above her face. Sansa felt his breath on the tip of her nose, hot as a dragon fire, but as cold as a hungry snowy tongue.

"I want to know the truth. No matter how dreadful, I just want to know. What are you?"

"I am the Prince of Darkness, the King of Ashes, the Seven Hells and the Underworld. Some know me as Satan or the Devil, even as Lucifer or Hades. But you, sweetling, can call me Petyr." Under normal circumstances she would have shaken her head at least, but this wasn't a normal situation. She was standing in the immediate vicinity of a man whose body was drawing darkness that attracted her with the same magical power as light of the lamps lured in the inattentive insects. She felt like a fly, small and weak, but under the protection of a predator who had decided to guard her under some perverse, incomprehensible pretext.

"You said your name was Acheron."

"Yes, but now that your mother successfully renewed her relationship with me, it will be safer for you to call me my human name."

"I want more," she repeated urgently, not at all unsettled by his strange monologue. She witnessed something unbelievable once. Sansa remembered their first encounter when Petyr disappeared like a steam over the pot, he just simply vanished. She had no doubts about his intentions because he didn't allow her, and he didn't let her think of the consequences because his power allowed it. He held her whole existence in his hands, as well as the existence of every other soul, alive or dead, innocent or sinful.

She felt a cold metal in her palm. She lifted her hand and held the object in front of her eyes.

"Money?" she murmured in surprise. The coin freezed her skin, but warmed her spirit.

"You said you wanted more. And I'll give it to you. But every piece of information has it's price. You'll have to pay for just a broken piece. And believe me that you won't like that price."


	5. Chapter 5

_To my empire, in dark cave,_  
_sinful souls, walks quietly,_  
_without scruples._  
_And you, my baby, sweet baby,_  
_you are a queen, who sees them,  
in your pride._

***

The night was cold and unpleasant. Sansa moved through the tangles of high-rise houses. She watched the lights turn on gradually, as their inhabitants pulled the curtains and closed the windows. Among all these creatures, she was trapped there like a bird in a cage, chaotically flying back and forth, unable to rest. She knew that if she had stopped for a second, she would never have the courage to take another step. The air flashed her lungs like a frosty whip, her legs changed to jelly, and an ominous shadow torches flared in front of her sight, but Sansa went bravely forward. The strap of a sports bag cut into her shoulder and swung at her side in a hectic rhythm of her feverish footsteps. She took only the necessities. Naivity, spiced with an incomprehensible desire for adventure, robbed her of the last remnants of rational thinking.

In the twenty-first century, things like this simply didn't happen. No one, her parents, perhaps even any higher power, who had played cruelly with her now, and had a very perverse sense of humor, had no right to do so. No one could tell her who to marry. Nobody except herself. When she learned that she had to marry Joffrey, the sweetest bite of her favorite lemon cake became bitter and turned into a hideous boulder of anger lying on her tongue. Her father justified his decision that Joffrey, as the son of the Prime Minister, was the perfect match for the daughter of other high-ranking government officials, and that arrangement was necessary to maintain the delicate balance that was in the politics. She was so paralyzed that no tears spilled from her eyes. In her thoughts, she returned to fairy tales, where the good won over evil, and princesses always ended in the arms of a kind prince. But the real world wasn't a fairy tale. The evil princes won very often.

Under the drape of darkness she fled her fate. Her anger powered her, fear held her back. The trees leaned in her direction, went for her, tried to keep her in place. Sansa was looking for a world that was even darker than the one she was in already. She didn't have to search long. In the center of Dublin, in a street she never visited, there was a brothel. It was a renowned business, Sansa's classmates were constantly babbling about it, but none of them had enough money to afford just one visit. Sansa stopped under the red neon sign. _Red Light._  What a name. The inscription flickered, the electricity cracked silently, and it sounded as it was betraying her from entering. But the shy girl was determined. What was the difference? To be destroyed by Joffrey, of whom she was scared as hell, or by some casual man who didn't necessarily have to be a sadistic monster?

She placed her shaking palm on the ice cold handle and squeezed it slowly. The moment she opened the door, she regretted her action, but the thought of getting several hours of relative freedom pushed her further. She found herself in a narrow corridor, flooded with heavy scent of flowers and oriental spices. The girl was blinded by the darkness surrounding her from all sides. She took another step forward, and a dull reddish light suddenly poured into the room. Hell. The first word that came to her mind. She glanced at the walls, leaving sinful scenes to dig into her memory. The walls were covered with luxury-looking wallpapers that were patterned with black blooms on a bloody red background. Among them, a modern fresco appeared on which the human bodies were captured in all sorts of positions, their faces distorted by the mute pleasure. Sansa, by the force of her will, tore her eyes away from the paintings on the walls and forced herself to go forward. There was a large black door at the end of the corridor. Sansa was sure it headed right into the middle of the action. She walked towards the heart of a brothel which looked like a luxurious business, but the practices that were on the order of the day here were as perverse and animal-like as if they took place in the dirtiest nest of sins.

Finally she reached the door. She put her palm on the thick sheet of wood and quickly pulled it back to her body. The wood throbbed under her skin, whispered mad words that frightened her and lured her in at the same time. Sansa looked back for the last time. She stared longingly at the front door, behind which the lights of the lamps flashed, where a normal, orderly world was. But then she realized that the scenery out there was as pervasive as the building she was just in, except that there was nothing in the brothel to hide human vices. She looked away from the last escape route, from the last hope of salvation, and touched the gate to the hell that stood in front of her again. Suddenly, the scene behind her didn't frighten her so much. She expected everything and nothing. She was afraid of everything and nothing. She stood there with determination, and at the same time she crouched in the corner of her mind until she was consumed with fear to the core of her bones.

She pressed the black wood and stepped inside.

***

"There's a girl, sir. She says she wants to be one of your kittens."

Petyr raised his eyebrows and stared at his assistant who had just appeared at the door. The recruitment of new prostitutes has ended long ago. He made sure that all ads were turned down right after the completion of the admission process. But there were always some dull, dirty street bitches who decided to test his patience. Most of them have never come back from here, but not because he had mercy on them and accepted them into his services. This time, however, Petyr knew that there was no street dirt, but he had to keep the decor in front of Ros. His assistant, so smart that she could do something more than just satisfy the horny men but at the same time, too stupid and weak to be able to break out of these shackles, didn't know that Petyr wasn't only an exceptionally intelligent man with a sense for dirty business.

"How old is she?"

Ros shrugged. Petyr leaped to his feet and drank the rest of the whiskey, which gleamed with gold in the glass he held between his fingers.

"Bring her here, at least I'll have a little bit of fun." Ros nodded quickly and disappeared. Petyr hypnotized the slit in the door that Ros slipped through. He was absolutely sure who came. Spontaneous ideas that arose in her brain were, in fact, a carefully thoughtful pulls on his chessboard, and it wasn't the first time he had suggested a dangerous thought to her. Her mind was so seductive, so innocent, maidenly pure and naive. It didn't take long and the glimpse of copper convinced him that he had brought her back in the right direction, right in his arms, so desperate that she would jump in without a blink.

"Welcome to my kingdom, Sansa," he greeted her, a corner of his mouth twisted in a devilish smirk. He delightedly watched her inner struggle, the way her eyes goggled at him, scared and embarrassed and relieved all at once.

"Did you like what you saw out there?" he continued, not surprised at the fact that she didn't say a single word. She watched him approach her, completely speechless, soaking into his slender, panther-like body hidden underneath a layer of expensive clothes.

"No," she breathed finally.

"What matter really brings you here, sweet creature?"

"Fear." Petyr smiled. _Fear._  A feeling that nurtured and strengthened his power. He built his realm upon it, all the basic building blocks of other negative feelings that devoured the human race were made of fear. When he connected fear with a pleasant experience, a brand new, much more dreadful and closer to him, dark feeling was made. One warm smile on his lips was enough for Sansa to put her bag on the floor and sit in the chair that stood in front of his desk and waited only for her. He didn't have to bid her to say everything. She did it alone, gave him all the details. Petyr listened to the heartbreaking narrative of the injustices to which she was exposed. Normal person would feel sorry for the girl who had tears in her eyes again, but Petyr wasn't an ordinary man. When the first salty drop rolled down her face, he took a few steps forward and knelt beside her.

"I want him dead," she said and Petyr leaned to her, with a barely noticeable touch of his lips wiped her tear off.

"That's a very dangerous wish, Sansa," he whispered. The girl shuddered. "What price would you be willing to pay for his soul?"

"Anything," she said instantly, "I'll give you as many souls as you want, just save me from him, please!" 

Petyr laid his palms on her knees with a sigh, pulling them slightly away from each other to wedge between them.

"I wouldn't call it a rescue," he said thoughtfully, when for the third time in such a short time felt her soft skin beneath his fingers. "The more you give me, the smaller chance there will be for your _real_  deliverance." Sansa didn't understand anything he said, but his voice was so nicely wrapped around her body that she couldn't do anything but look up into those gray eyes and let him spill his words. Rescue. It sounded so sweet. Dangerously sweet. She glanced at his face, which was unusually close to hers. His palm burned on her face as his eyes flooded her with cold. She felt it stretching in her heart, turning it into an infinite ice wilderness, on which she walked alone, but with Petyr over her head, instead of the burning kisses of the glowing sun.

"I still don't know who you are," she said softly, as if she was afraid of his reaction. Petyr only stared at her knees that were trembling slightly and touching his body a little. He stopped them from shaking with another tight grip of his fingers.

"You know it very well, sweet creature. You're just afraid of the truth," he replied, pressing his lips against hers. He felt her inexperienced mouth stiff with surprise, but as soon as the tip of his tongue slid slightly over the soft skin of her lower lip, her body slowly began to relax and almost melted in his palms, which moved back to her face. He wrapped his fingers around the nape of her neck as the other palm returned to her cheek. He heard her moan between the kisses, and that sound sent a wave of electricity straight into his loins. It was all so wrong. Petyr, old enough to be her father, plundered the mouth of a girl who had come from the blood of his old love. Innocent kisses were much more perverse than the seedbed of the sins that was deep beneath their feet. He blinked in surprise when he found out that it was Sansa who grabbed his lower lip between her teeth in an effort not to let him pull away. Her fingers clutched the black cloth on his chest.

"You should go home, Sansa."

"I can't," she shook her head and her grip tightened. Petyr smiled. _So desperate. So tied up._

"You can. Now you can go back there calmly."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are heating up, folks. Sansa jumps straight into the throat of hell and she actually enjoys it. Thank you for reading this trash, I sooo much appreciate all those flawless comments and everything! ♥

Her trembling legs slowly led her home. She still felt Petyr's lips, hungrily crushing against hers. His palms, like a gentle claws holding her body firmly. Lust that has gone from every move he has made. She should be afraid of him. She _was_ afraid of him. Whether he chose her for any reason, he was still a man, much stronger and more cunning than she was. But much more than his power, she was scared of his mind. The way he literally ate her with his eyes. He didn't let go of her even for a second, the silver pupils sank into her and scratched her conviction, persuaded her and begged, and Sansa yielded _so_ willingly. The muffled moans, coming out of the bowels of the brothel, were no longer pushing blood straight to her cheeks, but directly between her legs. Was that his intention? No, his motives were probably much deeper, so drilled beneath the surface that Sansa didn't see them. If her body was what he craved, he would have raped her long time ago and threw her away afterwards, useless and destroyed. But for some special reason he needed her. Sansa wasn't so naive to think that love was what connected him to her. He probably loved _something_ , but it wasn't her.

She hurriedly picked up the key from her pocket and pushed it into the lock. Cold and darkness spilled out of the keyhole. She glanced at the window leading into the kitchen. It was dark. Sansa puckered her eyebrows and twisted the piece of metal that was tightly clamped between her fingers. When she opened the door, she was afraid. There was no living thing anywhere. Even though she returned late at night, long after the time she could roam outside, no one came to scold her.

"Mom?" she breathed quietly, her voice twisting like a snake in her throat, twirling and wrapping around the vocal cords, barely leaving it. She put the bag that hanged from her shoulder all the while softly on the ground. By touch, she found the switch and turned on the lights. For a second, Sansa was flooded with a warm feeling of relief.

At that moment, phone on the table in the hall started to ring.

***

Beams of sunlight lazily intertwined through the foliage of trees, creating a breathtaking light mosaic on the faces of everyone. Beautiful weather was ridiculed by grieving faces of the mourners, and instead of happy smiles, only wrinkles were conjured on their foreheads. Sansa stood in the first row, with her younger siblings obediently gathered around. Her stare wiggled to the majestic oaks which fervidly whispered their moving melody with the help of violent gusts of wind. They competed with the skilled fingers of the musicians who stood by two coffins, one of which was slightly smaller than the other, and with bored poker faces played the same song for perhaps a hundredth time. Sansa was sure that the heavy atmosphere, which, like a black cloth choked all the living things over the crowd of mourners, wasn't perceived by them at all. It was just another funeral, nothing that could composure them. But Sansa's sorrow-pierced heart was bleeding from many deep wounds and didn't want to stop.

"It's your fault," Arya murmured, keeping a respectful distance from her sister who gave her an incredulous look, but the younger girl was still staring at the coffins, now and then squinting at Sansa by her side to make sure her words wounded her well. But Sansa didn't move, she just bravely focused her eyes to backs of the clerks who had just begun to lower the coffins under the ground.

"This is the last chance to look at them, Arya," Sansa said after a while and looked down.

"If you won't figure out something _good_ soon, we will follow them," Arya said defiantly, but the heavy haze of mourning remained after the last syllable. Another breath, surely spiced with a nasty word, was immediately caught by tears and their strong stream blew them off her throat, tied up by fear.

"What are we going to do now?" Rickon whimpered.  _He almost doesn't even know what's happening,_ swept through Sansa's head as she gently squeezed his palm with a cheerful smile that stole the last remnants of power from her. The back of his hand was soft, satin soft with innocence of a child, tender and fluffy like the dove's wings.

"I don't know."

"If you didn't run away, _nothing_ would happen!"

_Oh, how wrong you are, little sister._

_"_ Shut up, Arya!"

There was a disapproving hiss behind their backs. Girls exchanged their last hateful gaze and focused on the events ahead. Ceremony was coming to an end. The children who suddenly became orphans watched as their parents' bodies disappeared under a thick layer of soil. Sansa loved it's scent, but now it just smelled of death and hopelessness. That disgusting odor brought tears to her eyes, and filled her throat with bile. _What's going to happen to us now? What exactly?_

It all happened just before Sansa returned home. She hurried so she wouldn't piss off her father, when completely drunk Joffrey crashed into the car in which her parents sat, blinded by the fear for their impudent, irresponsible daughter. Sansa was caught by another wave of consuming sorrow when she realized that the last words she had exchanged with them were filled with bad blood. Despite that, however, Mr. and Mrs. Stark went to look for her and it became fatal for them. All that kept Sansa above the mental breakdown was the fact that Joffrey didn't survive the accident. _But at what price,_ she thought bitterly as she watched the priest take a handful of dirt, whispering something to it's filthy folds, then letting it flow slowly between his fingers. The wind took the soil instantly, and with a gushing gesture made it a translucent brown curtain that for a moment shot down the field of view of all the participants.

People began to slowly return to the church, but a group of orphans stood in place like they were frozen. Sansa didn't dare to take a single step forward, incapable of approaching her parents' tomb at a distance of less than a few dozen meters. Arya bluntly grasped the little hands of her younger brothers and slowly led them to the seat of their parents' last rest. Sansa, her tears running down her cheeks, watched as the three of them knelt down and laid some flowers over the grave. A black ribbon, strangling a narrow green neck of richly decorated wreath, flew in the wind with melancholy, waving at her with long, thin hand and chased her off with shaggy fingers. Sansa desired a touch of the man who had caused it all. In her soul, she agreed with Arya's accusation and carried all the blame on her shoulders. If she hadn't run into that damn brothel and hadn't spoken her request, Petyr would probably never do it. Or was she wrong? Could she ever trust the man who had exchanged the life of a sadistic bastard for lives so precious that their price couldn't be quantified? Would Joffrey really be so mad and vicious that she had to sacrifice the souls of those she loved the most for the salvation of her own? She couldn't answer these questions and hundreds of others. But Petyr's voice resonated like a sinister echo of her decision in the back of her skull.

 _The more you give me, the less chance there is for your real rescue._ She finally understood the full meaning of his words. At the time when she was overwhelmed by his presence, she considered this sentence to be a ridiculous metaphor. She didn't expect it to prepare arable land for her own destruction. Though Petyr slowly killed everything she loved, she couldn't stop thinking of the taste of his lips and the tips of his fingers, sending little electricity shockwaves down her body that would bristle the fine hairs on her forearms to just wipe it down with a single touch of his palm. She was still drunk with the heat that burned out of his body and paralyzed by the coldness of his eyes. She felt him destroying her from within, but at the same time he filled her with feelings she had never experienced before. Desire. Need. Even the stupid way he twisted the right corner of his mouth in a wicked smile could ignite a flame of lust inside her. Joffrey had never managed to strike even the slightest sparkle.

"Sansa, _sweetheart_!"

A familiar voice pulled her out of her thoughts, though she couldn't associate it with any face she knew. She quickly wiped her tears off with the back of her hand and turned around to find the source of the sound. A rather tall and sinewy woman walked up to meet her. The sharp contours of her body concealed a poorly fitting black jacket, under which was an inappropriately chosen, shimmering pink dress. Sansa raised her eyebrows. The only thing she could call the woman's beauty trait was her long hair shining in warm auburn colors, just like Sansa's, falling in a glistening waterfall to her waist.

"Who are you?" Sansa said suspiciously and narrowed her eyes.

"Family," the woman replied, her strange, high-pitched voice, sweetly stretching out like honey, spreading her ugly, thin lips in the warm smile, from which Sansa felt her back freeze.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Lana Del Rey’s Cola and Gods and Monsters in addition to this story. You won’t regret. I swear to the gods, old and new. :)))

The house rose among the slim, wind-gnawed trees like Dracula's Castle of Horror. A prickly fence with golden spikes revolved around it, rude dry shrubs crouched around the driveway, and steel-black clouds converged over a dark roof covered with moss like a frightened herd of sheep. There was no other house far away, the wind whirled along the long irish plains and braked at the steep cliffs lurking behind the endlessly long moorlands.

Aunt Lysa was always strange. Unlike her sister, Catelyn, who was much more emotionally balanced, she tended to be exaggeratedly addicted to particular people and boundlessly adhered to life's certainty, so very often, when one of the crutches suddenly broke, she found herself at the very bottom. Sansa remembered her as young and beautiful. The last time she met her was at her wedding. She was too enamored with fluffy white dress that looked more like a whipped cream cake than an overcoat of a cloth to notice the disturbing sparks that danced in her aunt's lovely blue eyes. For the little Sansa, she was the beautiful aunt Lysa, she was perfect and pure in her wedding day, and she wanted to be like her one day. The sequence of events in Lysa's life, however, caused the angel's face of her personality to literally rot away and was replaced with a hollow mouth of bitter reality.

"Don't worry, darlings," Lysa twittered, but Sansa noticed the dark shadow that licked her pupils like a big hot tongue of a bloodthirsty dog. "My husband _loves_ children, he will care for you as his own," she added with a smile that ripped innocent souls to pieces and cut hearts in half. Sansa was alert. Husband? As much as she knew, Lysa's husband died in unknown circumstances about ten years ago. He was a well-known politician, so no one was surprised when he disappeared one day and left no trace behind. Criminalists have closed the case after three years of investigation, with the fact that large animals on the political field are just likely to suffer some "accidents". The whole family was able to accept this fact, but only the mentally unstable Lysa began to fall into panic and devoted her paranoid care to her only son, Robin.

"Did you find a new one, Aunt Lysa?" Sansa said cautiously, and Lysa looked at her, then glanced down at the small leather fringed handbag and began to hunt for her keys. The strange smile from which Sansa's blood froze in her veins never left her lips.

"Yes, darling. And I couldn't choose better." She finally pulled out the key bundle and thrust one of them into the lock with unprecedented vigor. She turned it slowly and delicately as if she'd enjoyed every return home and was as if she had come in for the first time, and no less gourmet she opened the door, stopped at the threshold, took a deep breath, and a cluster of syllables swirled out of her mouth, from which only the word "home" could be composed. Somewhere in the entrails of the house, there was a shriek, and a rhythmic steps brought a slender figure towards the door that glanced at the newcomers with a slight smile on her lips, staring at one of them for a lot longer time than the others, longer than it was healthy. Sansa gasped.

"My dear children, this is my husband Petyr," Lysa purred, clutching at the black-haired man with ash on his temples and wrinkles around the silver eyes that never smiled when his mouth did. Sansa felt a fist of jealousy in her stomach, but the sudden burst of fear and surprise immediately overwhelmed it.

"It's more than nice to meet you." The velvet baritone stirred the surrounding air, but his eyes were fixed only to the red-haired girl who was staring at the floor beneath her feet and praying that it was just a bad dream. To avoid further non-verbal contact with Petyr who seemed to pursue her at every step, Sansa slowly turned around and looked at the sleepy, gray-colored garden where the first flakes of snow began to bear.

"Snow!" Rickon shouted and fled to the garden. His older brother immediately followed him, apparently driven by the discomfort of the whole situation, but only Arya remained to stand on Sansa's side and looked intently at Petyr as he stood in front of them in all his terrible, breathtaking beauty. Sansa wasn't the only one who was attracted by his dark aura as a magnet, and at the same time repelled by it like it was a nasty, foul-smelling carcass. Lysa began to squeeze his neck with her lips at an unseen moment and left small red marks on it. Petyr wrapped one of his arms around her waist, but his eyes silently followed Sansa's innocent gaze. _You'll be able to touch me like this too, if you want to,_  festered from his eyes even though his lips were firmly pressed to each other in a thin line. Sansa blinked and left the two lovebirds to candy themselves. Although she saw through the corner of her eye how Petyr replays her aunt's passionate display of love, she knew that the dove wasn't the one the rook sings his songs to. No word directed against her weak-hearted aunt had a meaning. The rook doesn't sing. The rook only caws. Every sweet word full of fake love that dripped from his tongue like poisonous honey was like a slime that writhed on the floor like a cocoon full of leeches, and eventually burst like a disgusting sore and crawled back into the depths of the house. An unwelcome visitor who was at home there at the same time.

Sansa stepped back into the garden. The white cold specks, like divine tears, blew into the fiery whirl of her hair, where it turned itself into water and returned back to where it belonged. The smell of pain smacked in her nose. She felt the blood flowing from her cracked heart spilling over her entire body and burning every cell that would join her toxic battle madness. For a moment she watched her younger siblings rejoice in the first snowfalls, but when she turned back to the house entrance, she saw Arya watching her. Sansa frowned and her sister immediately disappeared into the darkness that absorbed the corridor. Sansa looked around in confusion. Arya seemed as if she knew this place. Or she was the only one with a clear mind. Rickon and Bran were blinded by childhood; Sansa, on the other hand, was eaten by the adulthood that had driven to her like a train and didn't intend to slow down even for a second. Sansa stood on the rails leading to her destruction, and the driver of that misfortune was Petyr. Hades. How many names did he have? Hades, Lucifer, Satan, Devil. There were too many.

With a humiliating feeling of hopelessness, she reluctantly returned to the house. She slipped silently out of her boots in the hall, and began to sneak in her socks only. The appearance of the interior shocked her. The skin of the dead animals didn't hang on the walls, and instead of the glasses, their heads with beaded eyes didn't shine on the drainboard, as she would have expected from her aunt. The whole house felt incredibly unsettled. Although there lived two people in it, there was no evidence that they really _lived_. There were no little things that suggested that life is going on normally. No socks on the floor, no dirty dishes on the coffee table. When she walked through the shelf in the library with her finger, a single dust particle didn't pour on it's pad. And in the middle of that chaos sat the quietly calm Petyr. There were boxes of Christmas decorations in his lap. He had his typical crooked smile on his lips, which he only saved for Sansa. The girl felt a strange feeling of safety and well-being. Though her younger siblings were within a few dozen meters around, Petyr radiated a much warmer aura than they all together. He put the box on the seat beside him and pulled out one long slender tube. It was twisted at the end, shining in red, and a silver hook shone on it's tip. Sansa bit her lip.

"Are you going to decorate the tree?" she asked foolishly before she could think of her question at all. Petyr shook his head slowly and ran across the smooth glass surface with his index finger.

"We never have a tree _here_ ," he said. "Come to me, Sansa."

Sansa made an uncertain step towards him. With widened pupils she watched how his hand clung to her thigh, his eyes stabbing her like two pins. He reminded her of Santa. Perverse Santa without a red suit, white beard, and a friendly look. As she stared into his eyes, she could see nothing but darkness and lust. When Sansa finally sat in his lap, her whole body shivered.

"Are you afraid, sweet creature?"

Sansa shook her head bravely. She glanced at his forehand and palm, large and manly, covered with fine dark hairs as it crawled over her thigh, and stopped at her waist where it sank with frightening precision. As if she was made for him. As if he had created her himself. He moulded her like a statue, slowly and carefully, exactly to his own image. She glanced at his face. Shallow wrinkles twisted the contours of his face like tiny, precise touches of the blades of a thousand knives, twisting around his eyes and lips, and disappearing into the islands of gray hair on his temples. He was beautiful. Terrifyingly beautiful. Her hand fell on his forearm.

"Actually, I'm afraid. Very," she whispered, and Petyr smiled again, lifting a hand to grab her chin, and the touch instantly ignited the spark that only he could make out of her. When his lips touched hers she, by surprise, wiped the box off and it had to be heard even in Dublin, but Sansa didn't accept any consequences. She felt Petyr's hand sliding along her side, his lips whisking softly to her throat with a silent smack. His greying stubble caused her slight pain that changed right into pleasure. She clutched her fingers in his hair, and with every pull on one of the strands, her heart jumped with joy when she heard his breath speed up.

"Merry Christmas, sweet creature," he murmured as he finally broke off the soft skin on her neck. Sansa frowned, her finger moving to the point where his lips stood for the last time. Petyr watched her with anticipation in his eyes.

"No, these Christmas will be everything but cheerful," she shook her head and tucked a loose spring of red hair that hanged over her face like a hood behind her ear.

"You are learning fast, very fast," he nodded and squeezed the adornment he had kept in his hand all the time. Shards that had left from it fell on the floor to the others. Sansa grabbed his hand covered in blood, streaming in large round drops on his slacks. She stuck out the tip of her tongue and catched one of the red beads that covered his palm like a necklace.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm REALLY sorry for that huuuuge gap in between chapters, but I've been SO busy lately. You know - school, hobbies, daddies. *lol* So forgive me and enjoy this chapter!

"After what you've been through, I can't want you to go to school, it makes sense, dear. I am _not_ crazy."

Aunt Lysa was a great actress. The role of a comprehending and dear woman was perfectly acted. At the very beginning of their coexistence, Sansa really believed that it was real. But when there was the first problem, which pierced Lysa's overstretched balloon of self-control as a sharp tip of a pin, Sansa recognized all the dirt that flowed from her aunt's distinctive interior as a sewage. She changed into a monster regularly. In the hairless monster, with flesh in place of elastic skin, with hatred instead of understanding.

_"You little bitch! For how long do you sleep with him?" Lysa's nails sank into the skin of her head like claws of a vulture. She imagined the way they tore it into pieces, pulling on long strings of intestines and braiding them into strands on which Sansa hung like a crippled, wretched puppet._

_"I don't have anything to do with him, I swear," Sansa whispered desperately, then screamed in horror as the demonic woman grabbed her hair roughly and dragged her to the sink, each memory of Petyr's gentle lips now resembled a bite of an enraged wolf._

_"No?" Lysa said sweetly and reached over to turn the faucet. Water sounded like the sprinkling of shattered glass that Sansa had stuck in her ears, lips and tongue, making it impossible for her to respond to Lysa's insults and accusations, but the bony grip of her fingers was like steel._

_"Keep away from him, bitch. You are the same as your mother. She chased him away, but he still loved her. Well, and how deep she fell. And you'll end up like that too, Sansa," she whispered, over and over again, like a broken radio, like a ghostly jammed tape that was playing despite it was broken._

Crazy. The only word she could perfectly describe Lysa's crooked, fearful and paranoid eaten personality with. Sansa, like a shadow, trailed up the stairs to the first floor. The wood was scratching under her feet, the knots blinking at her like gentle, all-knowing eyelids and the bucket she carried, rocked at her knees as a bob.

When she finally climbed up, she saw Petyr standing on the opposite side of the corridor, half hidden in the darkness. He held a pomegranate in one hand, the other lightly rested on the heavy cherry-red oak door that had to lead only to his study. It was as if he was inviting her there, refined and without words, but at the same time he was telling her that the underworld was hiding right behind that door. From time to time, his fingers dug into a juicy fruit, and the red juice flowed over them like blood. Drops pounded on the ground, but Petyr didn't seem to have the slightest pain. He watched Sansa utterly unconcerned, although he knew very well what his _technical_ niece was going through. The niece whose lips tasted better than his favorite fruit. He swallowed the red seeds silently.

"What is it?" Sansa barked in his direction, her voice trembling with rage, and a humiliation on her tongue. "If you cared for me as you always say, I wouldn't have to wipe the floor now, just like a thousand times before, even though it's completely clean," she added, and dipped a large, smelly cloth into the bucket. The sparkling water sprang out and spilled over trousers, but Sansa ignored it. With fury, as if she had just committed murder and tried to wipe out the traces, she wiped the waxed parquet. She wanted to wash away her presence, to remove any signs of having ever stepped in. She wanted to rip wallpapers from the walls, burn curtains and shred carpets. Drown in order and reach up for chaos, like the last intact straw in the sea of rotten grass.

Petyr chuckled.

"Every lesson, even the hard and painful one, will pay off one day. Be strong and patient and _that_  will bring you fruit of appreciation," he said, holding his pomegranate, gesturing towards him, standing there like a serpent, wrapped around the house a thousand times, choking it with endless loops of his tail. But there was no tree of knowledge in the garden, to which he would devote his naive prey, and there was no paradise from which it could flee and sober up. Hell. Hell, and the ruins of justice, the only thing that surrounded his little isle of destruction.

Sansa, though she didn't want to, slowly fell to her knees. She didn't know where the sudden submissiveness was growing inside her, the reconciliation with the fact that from that angle it was a much better, more sensual look. She fixed her eyes on him, as large as two bright blue lakes, and sighed a soft breath as his juice sprained thumb touched her lower lip. With the only agile, surprisingly confident movement of her tongue wiped the sweet-acid fluid from his fingers. There was a long sound resembling a purr of a satisfied cat, and it made her stomach vibrate with desire. Without keeping her eyes away from him, she let his thumb slide inside her mouth and Sansa started to suck on it.

***

Making that decision didn't take more than few seconds. Still, the frost gnawed at her bare thighs as she hurried outside the house. Every moment she was nervously pulling down the hem of her skirt, which was constantly on its way up. It was the first time that she had decided to really break the rules, and to go to the wilderness of the city on her own. Taxi arrived faster than she expected, and she was afraid that Aunt Lysa would see the yellow intruder lazily drive over the almost unused road leading to her vulture nest. The granite flagged pavement turned into a dirty path lined up by bones, and instead of perfectly cut shrubs was bordered by stinking carriages covered with buzzing clouds of flies.

"Where will it be, miss?" Sansa slumped in the car and for a moment felt that she had to be heard in the bedroom where Aunt Lysa was spending most of the time she had never been able to figure out what she was actually doing there. _Probably Voodoo rituals_ , she thought as she pulled herself into the passenger seat, scrupulously cautious not to reveal more skin than necessary. The taxi driver's glance licked her as slick as the cold breeze when she dared to push her leg out of the warm duvets at night.

"To Dublin," she murmured absently, looking out of the window, the house moving away with each meter until it turned into a tiny toy-sized chess piece. Sansa almost heard the straps of fear falling on the mat under her feet. There will be no flaming gun barrel in the form of Aunt Lysa, no devilish tempter who did everything to make Sansa feel sure about nothing at all, not even herself. That was why she fled. To find herself again. She was really going to take a chance to get drunk, try a drug, donate her virginity to the first nice guy who gets in her way. There was no one she had to answer to. Aunt Lysa would be _happy_ if Sansa happened to be a victim of a fatal accident. _Like my parents,_ drove through her head as the car turned to the motorway exit. And Petyr? Petyr, Acheron, Hades, Satan, Lucifer. She had no idea what he was hunting for. She still struggled with the feeling that while she only passes through his life, his role is set in _her_ future as firmly as to die once.

"Are you going to have some fun, kitten?" Sansa jerked nervously, and the journey suddenly didn't run as fast as it did in the beginning, and the taxi's wheels burst into the asphalt that had consistency of the dough. But at the end, she nodded.

"Do you have a cigarette?" He nodded towards the compartment beneath the dashboard. Sansa reached to in and fished out a half-empty box with the Benson & Hedges inscription. She pulled out a thin oval bar and slid it between her delicate pink lips.  _Everything's a first time once,_ she thought when the tip of her tongue run over the filter. She went into the dangerous ends. With the cigarette in her mouth she crossed the first limit she had set, and this night there were full arms of obstacles that she had to overcome. The killer knotted between her lips was just the beginning. She returned to the path dotted with carriages and bones inside her mind, realizing that she was returning to it once again. But she walked in the opposite direction.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, mates. In today's chapter, there'll be a liiiitle bit of (fictional, since I'm REALLY bad at it) politics, but mostly some dark af Hades thoughts. Enjoy! Btw, I'm craving some good fanfics (except my own, lol), so leave me some links in the comments if you have something fookin' perfect stuck up your sleeve. :P Enjoy the chapter!
> 
> P.S. There's also a tiny bit of awkward Cersei/Petyr relationship in this. Kinda interesting, though. Also, THERE IS DRAMA. And it's kinda long.

"As long as they are in the field, you can't win, Baelish. They have whole north of the republic under their thumb, and now they are slowly spreading inland. Kilkenny reports a rapid decrease in our voters. If they get to Cork, we are lost." Tall, slender woman stooped at the head of the table, her prickly eyes staring at the dark-haired man. As soon as he heard his cover name, the corner of his mouth slightly twitched. Even after all those years, he couldn't get used to it. He moved his leg across another as the fingertips of his right hand tapped the polished mahogany table, and then put his hand down, pulling two boxes out of his jacket pocket. He held the cigarette between his lips, lighting it up with a swift movement of the match. For few seconds, he listened to the pleasant crack of tobacco and lazily blew out a thick cloud of smoke before he laughed and started to talk. Pungent smoke crawled like a snake across the room, climbing the walls, nervously retreating from them to clench Cersei Lannister, the campaign's chief, in it's long arms.

"I have their, let's say ... wild card," he said after a while, enjoying the sudden feeling of victory, a look at Cersei, whose eyes faded as he finished the sentence. Excitement and anger in them dissolved like a morning mist over the sleepy city, the flame for the thing disappeared with a painful sigh, as if the heel of a shoe crushed the last dying carbon in the fire, bleeding on the bed of his dead brothers.

"What wild card?" her eyes narrowed. Though Petyr showed unprecedented dexterity in manipulating the ridiculously simple human mind, Cersei never fully believed in his intentions. Petyr attributed it to envy that held her like a tumor. She couldn't get over the fact that he was much better than she _ever_ was. But she was pretty good in bed, her anger and hatred drove her to the edge of her choices, which Petyr appreciated. _Such people often die in streams of tears,_ he thought with an unreadable smile.

" _Sansa Stark._ Does it sound familiar to you?" he said provocatively.

Cersei's eyes widened with astonishment and sudden awareness.

"Shove a bird in a cage and make him sing the way you want. Brilliant as ever, Baelish," she grinned. Her praise sounded like everything but honesty, and she snapped the folder lying on the table in front of her, and the tips of her fingers stuck in the papers that came over it's rim. _Precise in the finest details,_  Petyr thought as he watched her, and he knocked the cigarette ashes into the red wine glass that stood in front of him, then he grimaced at the shank of his glass, The wine was too bitter to his taste, he prefered a sweet, spicy, lightly floral touch. One of the many reasons why he didn't fuck Cersei as happily as he should. She was also too bitter and rigid, though she always tried to prove the opposite.

"She is beautiful, intelligent, a little naive and prosecuted with... unhappiness. She was always bad with boys. For example, her first boyfriend abused her," he shrugged. "And now I'm here," he added casually.

"Do you want to make her your pawn, Baelish?"

"Exactly," he nodded.

"In that case, be careful. Her parents -"

Petyr clicked with his tongue angrily, hurriedly stood up to his feet, and with a few long steps he overcame the distance between them. He wondered how the _woman of act_ , which Cersei definitely was, didn't find the time to look at fresh newspapers all day. He stood close to the golden-haired woman who stared at him with a questioning expression written on her tired face. _It must be_ really _painful to lose your eldest son, isn't it?_ From her handbag lying on a wheelchair beside him, he pulled out a wrinkled clang of paper and spread it on the table. For a moment, he looked at the lines, his eyebrows barely twitching as he saw a particularly interesting or embarrassing headline, but eventually he found what he was looking for. He stabbed his forefinger into Mr. Stark's serious face, frowning at him.  _Like he doesn't even regret his own death, but he's just crazy about that bitch,_ he thought. Catelyn, his long lost love. Cersei gasped.

"See?" he snorted, amused. "I've taken care of everything."

"I wanted you to kick them out of the game, but I didn't mean anything illegal," she said through her clenched teeth. Petyr raised his eyebrows and pulled up his hands in a defensive gesture.

"You should have thought about it when you first contacted me. I move with much greater certainty on the other side," he added innocently. Cersei stared at him for a moment, but in the end she breathed a sigh of resignation.

"Happily, you're _also_ able to deal with the police," she murmured in her palm, covering her lips and nose in a thoughtful gesture, staring at a drink in which, like a plague invading the cells of the human body, flowed the cigarette ash. Petyr was sure that her eyes gleamed with disappointment. As well as dozens of other women, she had a weak spot for him. Every woman, in the secret of her soul, longed for power and evil in a handsome male body, and Petyr abused this little passionate plea. _Oh, one day you'll understand that it's much more for me than that shabby treasure between your legs._

"Tell me when I actually didn't deal with anything," he said, sliding back to the seat on her left where he sat motionless. "I've consulted with you when I persuaded you to take me between you. Your gentlemen tried to dig me out of their ridiculous team - I dug them up. You know very well that my almost bottomless and absolutely reliable source of money allows me to use all kinds of contacts. But I killed the two fools myself." For a moment he paused. "By the way, I took advantage of that scum that hurt my sweet Sansa, the girl should hate me and love me at the same time."

"I think that's exactly what she feels," Cersei snapped, a voice saturated with sarcasm, and Petyr leaned his head to one side and stared at her. He didn't even take her as the source of his pleasure, nor as a piece of meat to bite whenever he wanted. Cersei Lannister was just another pawn on his chess board, which smelled of blood, death, and dishonest deeds, through which he roamed into the sunlight. Only when he was thrown out of Olympus by his own brother and forced to use his potential in an empire deep beneath the earth's surface, far beyond the border of human perception, he got to know how it tasted to fail and become a victim of injustice. But he took advantage of his situation. He plowed his way to the throne, and from grievance he crafted a crown, dark and terrible as his intentions. On his way to power he used all human joy and sorrow, all their weaknesses and advantages, and himself became one of them to merge with them. Even so, he was much stronger, armored with knowledge that mortals could only dream of. One of the most powerful features of human brainlessness was that they were often slaves to their tendency to _fuck_ their laurels out of everything. Stupid and without an idea, but effective if you wanted to act like them.

He snubbed out the cigarette on the table, earning an angry sigh. Politics. Cersei. He was interested in both of them only to kill time. Where else could he learn so many disgusting details about humanity than at the very heart of their rotten system? The reign over the world of human race didn't belong to him. He could dream about it, he could long for it, but, in the very bottom of his soul, he was never interested in it. He was the King of Ashes, Lord of the Underworld, after all.

"Cersei? Would you fancy a little quickie?"

***

From the first moment she stepped into the smoky nightclub, she knew it was a really bad idea. The bodies, wildly waving in the rhythm of music, swarmed around like wasps, whenever ready to interrupt their gaiety and switch to other less innocent activities. Though Sansa seemed to be the least exposed of all present, she felt naked. Lazy eyes squeezed her to her bare calves and pierced her thighs and she tried to sweep them away with her palms. The longer she stared at the overcrowded parquet floor, the crazier rolls her stomach showed. She turned on her heel and, as elegantly as possible, snaked past the high tables, standing in a regular circle around the perimeter of the dance floor, tangled up to the bar where she it surprisingly empty. She was soon caught up in a tiny brunette with a sweet smile on her lips and a small box of condoms in her hand. Sansa raised her eyebrows.

"I'm ready for everything," Margaery gasped as she sank into a chair next to Sansa. Her seat bounced a little bit under her weight, but it didn't get her out of balance at all. Promptly she grasped the bar counter and even found a second to flash a smile at the bartender standing short way off them and cleaned some whiskey glasses with a white cloth.

Margaery was Sansa's best friend, and one of the few people she really trusted. Especially because there were not much left. They spent a lot of free time together, starting at school and ending with wild parties. It wasn't so true with those parties, because Sansa mostly took part in the retreat. Margaery was born to a wealthy family who owned a villa on the shore, and was often there for adolescent pleasure. Sansa had come obediently every time, but eventually she went into one of the rooms where weren't any puking classmates, and she just read a book.

"But I'm not, Marge," Sansa said with a grave expression on her face. Margaery frowned furiously. "I hope you'll borrow me some when the time's tough," she added, pointing to the box in her hand, and laughed. Margaery joined her immediately, and dramatically smacked the counter with her palm.

"Be careful. I don't want anything terrible to happen to my best friend." This time it was Margaery who looked serious. _Oh, nothing worse could._

"Like, for example, that someone who doesn't look like Brad Pitt and Channing Tatum in one person might _not_ try to seduce me?" Sansa chuckled, whose mind hadn't been absorbed by any of those men for a while by now. Margaery rolled her eyes and leaned to the redhead, grasping her hand and gripping her palm tightly.

"Shut up, you twat. I'm serious. Be careful when the boys are around. You never know what they could put into your drink. Don't take any pills from them, even if they looked _tasty as fuck_  and said that you'll see an unicorn after you eat them. Trust me, I've been here a hundred times. I haven't met a madman yet, but you never know. Extra, after nice good girls, they go twice more. Bad girls are overrated, though."

"I'm not any of those nice good girls, Marge."

"But you're pretty, that's enough." With these words, Margaery turned and turned her attention back to the bartender. It was enough for her to wave her long lashes a few times, and any man lied at her feet. Sansa watched enviously as the young man came up and leaned back against the bar and began to feed her with sweet words. Sansa would probably have her knees cracked because she wasn't used to the interest of men but Margaery looked like a real femme fatale, ice queen and a breaker of men's hearts in one. When she finished her spells, a glass of golden liquid came down in front of each girl.

"On behalf of the business," Margaery sneered, lifting a glass. "For your first time!"

Sansa imitated her with resignation, and as soon as clink of glass could be heard, she drank it all at once. Whiskey burned her pleasantly on the back of her throat and gave her courage.

***

She had no idea how many seconds, minutes, hours, or _years_ had passed since the first treacherous drop of alcohol hit her tongue. She was sitting on the sidewalk in front of the club, and the torn skirt waved freakily around her. A thin spring of blood flowed over her thigh, and an unbearable pain between her legs was driving tears into her eyes. The swinging of drunks and stoned teenagers had come to her from a great distance. She felt herself slowly moving away from the outside world, changing into a thin stripe of steam over the moon, and disappearing with the first sunlight. Memories slowly dashed through the path of her alcoholic haze, hidden in the subconscious, and covered her cheeks in ghastly shroud of shame. When she saw him, she was sure he was _the right one_. As right as the guy at the party could be.

_"Hmm, you're such a nice young kitten. You know what they say, huh? The rustier the roof, the wetter the cellar." A demonic, gruff laugh filled her ears, closed the imaginary door behind her, and settled down in the central part of her brain, playing solo on a messy, ruined violin, strings rolling in an irregular, breathless rhythm. the sound of the instrument didn't go out, only the nasty shrieks reminiscent a nail over a mirror, the whisper of monsters from horror, and, last but not least, the desperate, endless call of "help"._

_"God, you're so narrow. I'd like to fuck your arse, too."_

_Help, help, help! The solo graduated, the peak of  the wicked concert was already close. Sounds began to be unbearable, ears couldn't listen to them no more. When Sansa opened her eyes, she could see nothing, only smell the sour scent of his palm, which made it impossible for her to shout aloud. More gaudy fingers scrambled under her tank top, clutching the female curves she was once proud of, but now she hated them and was ashamed of them. There were hot tears of pain and humiliation on her cheeks. Each of them he wiped with his thumbs, but didn't stop tormenting her body._

_"Meow," he cried and dropped the violin to the ground when he was finished with her. Sansa followed the cursed  instrument to the depths. As soon as she fell to the ground, she felt relief, the devilish music finally subsided, the only thing that went on was a cruel ending. The tingling tones slowly disappeared in the heartbreaking roar that sounded in her ears, but she didn't squeeze a sound from her throat, no matter how much she tried._

Her father was dead. Her mother was dead. The two older brothers went abroad - one of them was on a mission in Afghanistan, the other studied in America. Little Rickon slept as well as Brandon and Arya, but she might have been hiding under the blanket, and with the flashlight in her hand she was gulping the lines of some stupid book about fencing. Only Sansa rolled here in dust and dirt, her honor stolen and probably all personal belongings with it. By force of will she got up and went to find a telephone booth. On the way, she wondered who she could ask for help. But when she arrived at one, she realized she had no wallet, so she could call only a police station where nobody would help her. Not in the way she needed it. Defeated by despair, she slumped over the damp glass that formed the walls of the booth, and sat down in the cold grass beneath her. The winter slammed into her with the same drive as the nails of that asshole. Sansa shuddered.

"Petyr," she whispered, closing her eyes. She had to get over the fact that the man who was almost as rotten as the sadist who raped her was her only hope of salvation, the only sure irradiated point in the dark universe where she knew no one, and nobody knew her. Asteroids, hot comets and black holes waited at every step, but Petyr could dance without banging around them. She could attribute it to his age and the experience that came with it, but deep down inside her soul she knew that it was something else that made him so immune against all of the calamities. He was the creator of all the misfortunes in the life of every human being on the planet, he wrote the saddest tragedies and cut down the thin comedy's neck, which made life clearer and happier to people.

Suddenly, there was a creak on the damp asphalt. Sansa squinted slowly into the blinding light that shot through her pupils as a gun. Black Aston Martin waved like a liquid onyx on the road and quietly sang the safe-guard's song. _So the black car will save me, after all,_ she thought, remembering the fatal incident with Joffrey. Door on the driver's side opened. Familiar figure stood out like a shadow, and a gentle steps approached her.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dark Sansa. REALLY REALLY REALLY dark. Also, there's some magical af scenery you'll all love.

Hating the person who consistently destroys your life with clearly legible intent is simple. You begin to thoughtlessly condemn every cell in his body, send him into the Hell's jam, and curse him for three generations in advance. However, to hate a person who throws sticks under your feet, but at the same time collects them, breaks and burns them, isn't _that_ easy. Exactly such thoughts chased the head of a redheaded girl who, day after day, lost the courage to face the outside world. Each time she opposed, something terrible happened. For the first time, it was the death of her parents, followed by brutal pull of from alcohol intoxication. What would happen if she had given herself to her wounded ego for the third time and made another stupid thing?

She sat on the window sill in her room. Even though she had brought all the things from home here, she felt as though she was in the dungeon, even though the floor wasn't covered with piss and dirty straw, the wallpapers on the walls didn't weep under loads of mold, and there were no cobwebs in the corners of the room. She was imprisoned with herself and tormented by her own consciousness. She stared out of the window. The scene behind it looked like a furious dance of the gods, ball of death, where mortals danced for their lives. The rain whipped everything with the violent strands of ice water, whirring in the chimney, filling the house with horrifying sounds. The sky writhed under the strains of lightning, tangling it's tentacles over the dark clouds, like a sea monster eager for a stray ship Sansa was captain of. She commanded a slowly sinking cockleshell, but her crew was totally undisciplined, suffered from illnesses, and threw itself overboard. Sansa wondered if she could dive into the depths of the ocean with them. She was afraid that if she stayed alone on her ship, her end would be worse.

There was a knock. Sansa didn't make a sound, she just stared at the apocalyptic scene in front of her. She liked it. Just as lightning wrestled with clouds, her heart fought with reason. The door opened. Only one person could enter without waiting for the invitation. Sansa's younger sister slipped in and carefully closed the door behind her. There was a fox smile playing on her lips, but her facial muscles twitched. Something was wrong. _Everything was._

"How is my beloved elder sister?" she said cheerfully. Sansa lifted the corners of her mouth in a smile, but she felt as though they wore a several-ton weight.

"I was better once, I suppose," she muttered, turning to the younger girl. Arya's face consumed her with a inquisitive expression, she scanned and probed. Sansa didn't know what she was looking for. She hid nothing in front of her, except for a strange relationship with Petyr. Perhaps her sister was looking right for it.  Sansa didn't know why, Arya was too young to understand what was happening between Sansa and the man. She couldn't imagine what the strange mixture of feelings between them was. Feelings far away from love. But children  _adored_ secrets - the bigger and the more serious, the better.

"What is it?" Sansa said uneasily. "If you want money, then I won't give it to you," she tried to squeeze out of the unpleasant situation and play it out. But Arya merely smiled in the crooked way that reminded her of Petyr. _Can he even change his form?_ Arya took a few more steps towards Sansa, who moved away from her to the post under the window. For the first time in her life, the younger sister worried her. Sansa knew stories about scary children, but they only appeared in horror movies. _But this is a horror,_  she thought and her head wrenched when Arya was just a short distance away. Outside, the lightning struck, and Sansa jerked in alarm.

"Aunt Lysa told me that..." Arya began to speak, but Sansa interrupted her instantly and cut off the flow of her thoughts.

"Aunt Lysa is a freak!"

Arya straightened up in surprise.

"She was always kind to me," the dark-haired girl grunted, shrugging. Sansa clenched her fists, remembering all the days she had to scrub the floors, even though it was so shiny and clean that she could eat it from it. She remembered the senseless punishments, accusations, blasphemy and extortion. All because of _him._

"Not to me, Arya," she growled.

"It's all your fault, dumbass. If you didn't  _fuck_ with Uncle Petyr, she would be nice to you too." Sansa's patience was gone in a second. She stood up, grasped her sister under her neck, and pressed her to the nearest wall, her eyes flashing, as did the lighting outside. The pleasure that sprang from the unknown, watched as it was Arya this time, who was terrified to death. Sansa realized that she didn't know her like this. No one knew this Sansa, created by her experiences and meetings from the last days. Even Sansa herself didn't know the girl who took control over her, and she felt herself in her arms as a puppet, defenseless and perfectly flabby, the human debris of the person she had been before, before the rape, before Petyr. Arya's artery pulsed under her fingers in a regular rhythm. Sansa imagined the blood flowing through her veins, and it slowly freezed in fears. She could have everything, a bright future in the university, a good job, a loving family. She had lost all of it during one afternoon, when she brushed her lips in black beer, staring at the silver eyes of a man who slowly broke down her world in thousands of parts and created building blocks for his own from it. Without the only direct proof that it was all Petyr's work, she was absolutely certain. At the same time, however, she felt a strange sense of belonging, her heart apologizing him. Despite all the terrible things he did, she felt safe in his arms. She longed to hear the sound of his voice again, feel the soft touches of his lips, tremble under the electrifying discharges caused by his palms.

"Say something like that again, and I will kill you," Sansa whispered in her face, and there wasn't any childish threat in her voice, she was deadly serious, cold, and sincere. Arya took a deep breath, then began to nod furiously.

"Let me go," she whispered, and Sansa only realized how firm her grasp was. She felt as if someone was standing behind her, staring over her shoulder and whispering in her ear what to do. She heard the words of praise, the terrible hiss of a snake, croaking of ravens, barking of the furious dogs, howling of the wolves. She heard his voice. He dictated to her what to say, what mask to wear, where to move her fingers, how hard and how far. For a fraction of a second she closed her eyes and the vague person at her back suddenly got totally bright and unshakeable. Black hair, silver sprayed on his temples, eyes that never smiled when his mouth did. Sansa had to smile. It was him. He did it to her, created an emotionless monster that from time to time took command of her own body. Was it a part of his plan to create a strangely broken personality, perfectly innocent on the one hand, perverse and devastating on the other? Did he want to make her his successor, his ace that one day will be able to shuffle the cards of the others?

Sansa finally let off her grip. Arya immediately rushed away from her and headed to the door. For a moment she turned between the doorframe to give Sansa an unbelieving, wounded, disappointed look, before she dissapeared into the darkness of the corridor. The redhead dropped exhaustedly on the bed that stood under the window, her fingers snapping into her hair. _Could I do that? Could I kill my own sister?_

***

The sun was avoiding an arc in the middle of the forest, the pointlessly placed piece of soil on which they stood. The man in his expensive black suit spread a dark aura around him, which absorbed it's rays like a black hole. Between his fingers he held a dark red rose with the lightness and precision of a conductor. With the thoughtful movements, he snapped the thorns off it's stalk and dropped them into the grass that was dying under his feet. When he finished his work, he moved to the blossom. With his thumb and forefinger he rubbed the first petal, soft and juicy, innocent and defenseless. He was about to rip it off heartlessly, but his palm was instantly overlaid with another, much smaller. Smooth and soft, just like the blossom of the rose he was about to destroy. The palm rested thoughtlessly on his own. Sansa felt every fold of his skin, relishing the roughness of the small scars his hand was spotted with. She enjoyed that perverse feeling of pride as she tossed her fingers over the back of his hand and swirled the dark hairs that gave him the desired touch of masculinity. The essence that the young boys lacked. The reason why her knees buckled in front of him, her breath stagnated in her lungs, and her eyes flashed violently over and over.

Sansa run her palm over a flood of blood-red roses by her side.

"They shouldn't grow in the forest."

"And yet they do," he smiled, took advantage of her inattentiveness, and with a silent rupture he broke the bud that rolled in his palm under the gust of wind. Coniferous trees whispered their song silently, closing both figures in a circle that couldn't be escaped. When his fingers crossed the skin on the girl's temple, Sansa held her breath, trying to keep that moment in her mind. She felt him slide the rose in her hair. She dropped her gaze. Over the forest that rolled on the horizon, the sun danced and kissed the branches of the trees, above the place where they stood, clouds clustered. They threw a shadow over the red ocean, the tender gusts of wind carried the pine scent towards them, and thunders rumbled in the distance.

"Arya visited me today," she murmured, her stare stabbed at the tip of the scuffed sneakers her _merciful_ aunt gave her, and Petyr nodded, his two fingers lifting her chin to look straight into his eyes. Sansa's throat instantly dried. Her eyes wandered over his eagerly parted lips, but she rather moved it away quickly.

"What did she say, sweet creature?"

"That... she knows," Sansa replied. Her cheeks started to burn with red.

"About what?" Petyr teased as he run his thumb over her lower lip.

"About us," she said finally. Petyr laughed with a dark chuckle that had been born somewhere in the depths of his chest, and a perfectly clear tone came out of his throat.

"Smart girl," he admitted, "but not as smart as her sister. Dear Sansa, tell me - what do we do with people who know the wrong information?"

Sansa bit her lip.

"She knows too much," he murmured, leaning his head to one side and pulling her hair away from her shoulder to reveal her slender neck. Petyr leaned over and kissed her just below her ear, "What do we do to them?" he repeated as his mouth abraded her satin skin sweetly. Sansa squeezed her lips together and closed her eyes, her fingers wrapping around his forearms, which ran at the sides of her face like two pillars.

" _We kill them_ ," she moaned when his lips moved to her shoulder, and his fingers pulled on the strap of her bra. She couldn't help it, her palms run in his hair, and with a short movement she destroyed their carefully crafted structure, and it was not long before his hands slid beneath her hoodie and shirt where they wrapped around her slim waist and pulled her body closer.

"That's right, sweet creature," he said as he pulled away slightly, "but I would call it a bit different - we're removing the obstacles that prevent us from achieving our goals."

"My parents were an obstacle for you as well?" 

Petyr nodded.

"Yes. But I was not endowed with the ability to change human fates. It belongs to my brother, Zeus. I could only see how people drive themselves into doom. I can't prevent death or cause it, Sansa. I can only work with what I have. So I couldn't prevent your parents from getting in the car and dying in an accident, but I made Joffrey the other victim."

"That's complicated," she snorted, ignoring the fact that he had basically confirmed he was involved in her parents' tragic death.

"Not really, Sansa. My brother is very easy to influence."


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been AGES since I last posted a chapter, I know. But I'm back in the game now and the sin is gonna be huge. Stay tuned, fellas!

A heavy veil of moving tones descended upon heads of all guests. Rattling of polished cutlery mingled with the sensual sound of saxophones, which accompanied the relentless clapping of piano keys, perfect for the dreamy atmosphere. Ladies pushed their fluffy expensive furs from their shoulders, laughed with the waiters, and stroked their partners' and lovers' faces. From time to time a jingle of glasses of wine could be heard. Sansa had never felt so inappropriate. Petyr's palm rested on her lower back, his fingers firmly pressed against her lean body, hungry for another touch. She glanced around her. Richly decorated ceiling with golden engravings and breathtaking frescoes reflected in the tangle of tiny glass of chandeliers that, like huge and shiny crystal torches, shone in regular intervals high above the center of all events. Columns twisted lazily in the dark space beneath the gallery and connected it to the ground floor, where only the dancing couples swarmed. Knobs bravely supported the heavy terrace above and the masses of marble almost painfully moaned under it's weight.

Sansa let Petyr bring her to the table with a golden sign with a distinctive inscription of "reservé." When the waiter gallantly pushed her chair with a smile and bowed to her with a hand covered in a gleaming white glove, the nervousness of her heart raged wildly. _How do I behave? What do I say? How am I to smile?_ She was so busy in her mind that she didn't notice that the waiter was giving her something. She gripped the leather plates with the gold-written name of the restaurant in her sweaty hands and smiled. as Petyr sat opposite her and his lips were curled with his typical filthy smile. He was dressed in a pitch black suit with a dark cashmere shirt underneath. He looked like a god of death, a fallen angel of destruction, and a servant of hell in one person. _But he's all that,_ she realized and her intestines shuddered as she glanced shyly across the edge of her menu.

"Do you like it here, Sansa?" he asked. Sansa nodded. His gaze was hungry, deep dark eyes devoured her like his prey, his pupils slowly grind her expensive satin dress to individual threads and ate them with unconditional pleasure. When he got rid of her clothes, he processed her body in the same way. But it wasn't painful. His fingers touched the hot exposed meat, but it couldn't be called torture. Sansa's hand moved over her thigh to make sure she was _unviolated_. Dark green cloth was still flowing down her body like sparkling strands of water, copying it and giving away all its curves.

"Yes," she nodded after a moment. "Why did you invite me here?" her eyes narrowed and her elbows leaned against the table. His face got closer by few inches, but Sansa wasn't even a step closer to understanding what was happening in his features. She didn't know his role even though she was directing the whole game. It took her a long time to realize that her power over him was as big as the one that he had over her. But she couldn't work with it, unlike Petyr. A candle in the center of the table stroked his eyes with a soft flame and gave them a golden robe, but they remained cold and unpredictable. Sansa, however, liked to step into their turbulent waters, let herself be enthralled by the force of the water column, and breathed it inside her lungs with a satisfied smile playing on her lips.

"I need you to do me a favor."

Sansa's eyebrows flickered upward, towards the line of her hair. Petyr never asked for anything, only ordered. In a non-violent way he found paths into her subconscious, where he settled down as a seductive parasite, biting into the selected part, and pleasured her with his poison that paralyzed her neural system and handed it's reins to Petyr's hands.

"What kind of favor?"

"You'll kill your sister." Sansa gasped, shook, and even though she'd heard so many monologues about death and killing from him, he could always scare her out, as if he didn't know anything else. Love was a strange word to him, just as compassion. But the same thing could be said about Sansa, who slowly recognized his dark world and began to _like it._

"No," she said instantly, shaking her head in disgust. Petyr leaned back against his chair and smiled. _So stubborn, but not invincible,_ he thought as he inhaled a new splash of air to say the next sentence. "Why?"

Another word burned a brand into his mind. Burned and melted his flesh and dried his blood. It smelled of innocence and purity, even though Sansa had been already so corrupted by Petyr's presence in her life.  _Because you're mine. Because I don't want anyone else to prevent us from our journey. Because I don't want anyone to know. Because I don't want any creature on this planet to know._ Plants, birds, mice, does and wolves, all of them were eye-witnesses of a crime that Petyr had blatantly committed on a defenseless girl. He imagined Sansa walk barefoot along the path decorated with the scraps of bones, but none of them bruised her feet. She'd hold a human skull in her creamy white hands covered in fresh blood, and boldly carry it. Souls of the undead would dance around her, the psychotic creatures who'll never be calm. Beasts so terrible that Petyr was afraid of them himself. But Sansa would walk among them with a certainty so unwavering that it could freeze a human alive. By giving her his experience and lessons, he started to faint. Petyr knew it, but it didn't bother him. One day she'll be as powerful as he was now, even if he couldn't physically witness it.

"I wasn't asking," Petyr purred.

Soon, the waiter arrived. A cold steam rose from the opening of the champagne bottle. Sansa watched the sparkling wine spill into their glasses. They were so pure that she saw her own reflection in the icy white glass. But her eyes were filled with blood. She glanced at Petyr. As soon as the waiter hurried back to his duty, Petyr gripped the stem between his fingers and brought his glass to himself. The tinkling of glasses sealed a contract which they concluded without words. Sansa took a sip and swallowed the blood in her mouth.

"I'll do it," she whispered, clutching her glass firmly between her fingers. Petyr raised her eyebrows. Sansa reached with her hand towards him in silence and watched him take it in his carefully. For a moment he was just looked at the back of her arm, gently gripping is as if he didn't hold an ordinary human limb, but something very fragile. A flower made of glass that could get broken by any violent movement, any bit more passionate touch. His lips touched the back of Sansa's hand, and the girl felt a cold taste of metal on her tongue immediately.

***

When the black Aston Martin stopped in the driveway, the outside world was already covered in darkness. The fog crawled from the forests, sweeping the endless plains that stretched all around, rolled around their legs, and pushed them further. Petyr walked several yards behind Sansa, but the eagerness of his motions surrounded her and heated her. The wind whipped her hair into her face, obscuring her field of sight with copper curls, but Sansa went on. She opened the door. There was a grave silence inside. She looked back at Petyr, waiting for his approval. He barely moved his chin downward. She turned back to face the darkness that filled the entrance of a monstrous building. Every breath cost her more effort than the serious decision she made a few hours ago.

_Inhale._

_Exhale._

The sound of blood in her ears resembled a waterfall, her heart slammed wildly into her ribs. Somewhere a raven croaked. Petyr followed her to the door where she stood, frozen.

"Go," he murmured, putting a light kiss to the back of her neck, and she breathed deeply, pulling the hem of her dress up to not trip over it, and quietly stepped up the stairs. Planks squeaked ominously under her feet, leaving her courage behind with every step. But Sansa went on. She felt Petyr's gaze on her back. His presence moved her forward. And if there wasn't any Petyr, she'd already begun to plot plans for rescue with Arya. But Petyr whirled around her like a shadow, he was always close to her. She didn't complain, though. For the first time from the moment her parents died and she became a victim of rape, she felt alive. Even though Petyr was probably responsible for both of these crimes, he was like a balm for her. His voice healed the wounds on her soul, his hands pleasured her body. She gave up herself to him to enjoy, but she didn't feel like a victim. She _rose_.

Sansa stood in the corridor. At her left was Arya's room, next to it was Aunt Lysa's bedroom, where Petyr went to meet his marital duties. Sometimes. Sansa hated it when she had to listen to Lysa's moans and muffled sighs. Every decibel of that disgusting sound stood beneath her skin like claws of some beast, who chose the toll on her patience. She waited for the right moment. Even though her sixth sense told her that Petyr wanted her the same way she craved him, she never dared to take the first step. It was always him who had usurped her lips, she never did it herself. _It's time to change it,_ she thought as she knocked on the door. The wood melted into the bottomless darkness so it seemed as if there was no barrier at all. She put her palm on its rough surface and closed her eyes. She heard Petyr's breathing, shallow and eager, like a hungry lion. And she was his lioness.

"Oh, yeah, I'm going!" Sansa glanced at Petyr, looking uncertain, unable to move, and Arya opened the door with such a fervor that she got splashed by the cold wind. Sansa brushed a red curl away from her face and smiled sweetly, as an innocent girl she once was.

"What the hell?" Arya grunted and rubbed her eyes. They probably pulled her out of her sleep. Younger girl crossed the threshold and headed her toe towards Petyr. "Why is this creep here?"

He didn't even smile.

"We came to say goodbye."

Arya narrowed her eyes in disbelief. In the next moment she got brightened by sudden awareness. "Right! You _finally_ decided to escape because you _finally_ realized that you would never keep your romance in secret, right? "Sansa backed away. Petyr looked at her. This time he was the one who took the step forward. Arya pulled up a winning smile and crossed her arms on her chest.

"You're a pussy, Sansa." Suddenly, Petyr's hand swung violently and, with a loud squeal, struck Arya's face with a slap. Brown-haired girl stared in shock at his palm as it returned back to her original posture alongside his body. She brushed a tiny drop of blood from her lips and started to sob.

"I ... I'll tell this to Aunt Lysa. _She'll kill you both_ ," she said. Petyr snorted in amusement. Lysa, under the spell of a shitload of sleeping pills as always, was totally harmless. Suddenly, Petyr grabbed Arya by her hair, covered her mouth with his other hand, to keep her from screaming and nodding to Sansa and went back to the ground floor. The redhead followed the slowly, like a soulless body, her hand sliding down the railing as she walked down and watched Petyr drag her sister into the garden. _What kind monster I became?_ She thought, acting like a remote control toy. Petyr controlled her every movement, formed her own judgment and injected her with his own, and she couln't defend herself.

There was a click. Sansa jerked violently in the direction she sensed the origin of the perception that disrupted the flow of her thoughts. Her eyes dropped to Petyr's hand, which stretched in her direction. She glanced over his shoulder and continued across his arm, clothed in black, and stopped at the palm of his hand. He held a shiny gun. Sansa's guts curled into a rigid knot. Arya crouched in the grass at Petyr's feet, her body shivering with sobbs. It was the first time Sansa had ever seen such a horror. She glanced from her frightened sister to the seductive metallic body, provocatively waving just a few centimeters away from her in the light of street lamps. She looked up at the black-haired man. He was proud. It warmed her heart. For a hundredth of a second she held her breath and took the gun into her hand.

"The baby is charged," announced a deep baritone beside her. Sansa nodded and with all the power of will, she forced her body to turn towards the shivering figure on the ground. Petyr's palm landed on her shoulder and squeezed it tightly, and then again and again. When it didn't help, his lips  quickly landed at her temple. Sansa let out a silent satisfied moan and Arya started to cry even more. Sansa knew that her hysterical roar will haunt her in nightmares in the future, but it will be Petyr's chest to which she could cling to comfort herself. To muffle those screams. She targeted the barrel at Arya's heart. She imagined how it writhed in the strings of tendons and flesh, jerking nervously, spreading the last dose of blood across her body to keep her brain conscious, to taste all that horror, until the last moment. A human body is a pretty evil thing.

"Good night," Sansa whispered, and a tear streamed down her face, followed by the second, the third and the fourth. As she pulled the trigger, Petyr's lips shattered against her cheek and brushed another fresh salty strand of tears. Sansa dropped the gun into the grass and turned away from the scene.This time she was the one who was overwhelmed by terror. She buried her face in Petyr's chest, her fingers clenched in a dark shirt, and she breathed the smell of his cologne. He took a handful of her red hair and wrapped their thick strands around his palm, gently pulling, and Sansa lifted her head. Her eyes were covered in tears, but she smiled.


End file.
